EUR/usd
Wall Street finished one more day at record levels. Stocks are still being supported by favourable US statistics and bulls seem not to worry about the upcoming tapering. As if the festival could last forever. Yes, they'll think about all this and the payback later and today the US markets are celebrating Thanksgiving Day, so there will be little activity in the afternoon. Yesterday's purchasing of US assets was boosted by the quite strong data on weekly unemployment claims. They decreased to 316K despite the expected growth from 326 to 331. This index has almost completely recovered from the upsurge in early October. As you remember, the September rates were the best for the entire post-crisis period. With continuing claims the situation is even better. They total 2.776 million, which is the lowest rate since January 2008. Yet, these figures conceal the number of those who have been deprived of welfare payments due to their inability to find a job for a long time and of those, who have given up the idea to find it. The latter is confirmed by the decrease in the participation rate by 3.4%. The same with the unemployment level. The current rates correspond to those which were set not six, but five years ago. The unemployment rate made 7.3% at the end of 2008 and the employment-to-population ratio totaled 61% against the present 58.3%. Probably, the Fed shouldn't forget about this when targeting the level of unemployment. Apart from the USA eurusd was also influenced by the news from Germany yesterday. First the market was supported by the news about forming a government coalition. It is a dubious benefit for the euro as, most likely, Germany will intensify its pressure on the troubled countries to consolidate the budget. Really good news consisted in growth of GfK Consumer Climate Index. It rose to 7.4, which is the six-year high. All that became possible due to higher salary expectations. If it was about Americans, it would mean significant spending growth in the coming weeks and months, but Germans are more inclined to saving, so influence may prove to be not very conspicuous.
GBP/USD
The pound-bulls managed to breach the defensive line yesterday. The level of 1.6250 yielded under the pressure of USD's weakness, despite absence of any support from economic indicators. The second estimate of GDP in the third quarter reflected no change (the growth rate remained at 0.8% q/q). Yet, exports and business investment data proved to be disappointing. Well, nothing changes – the British economic growth still depends on consumer activity rather than exports and manufacture. At some point the pair hit 1.6330, where it traded just a few hours at the beginning of the year and before that – as far as two years ago. Today the pound can be affected by Carney's speech on the release of the BOE's Financial Stability Report.
USD/JPY
Nothing changed: the pair is moving up with brief corrections. On opening of the day it managed to reach 102.20 and now trading is held close to 102.00. Due to yesterday's upsurge of the euro EURJPY reached 138.80. Above this level the market was just for a few hours in May 2009.
The market has made a nice entrance into the holidays, we must say. Stock exchanges hit new highs day after day, being fully confident that the printing press of the Fed will support their purchases during the Santa Claus rally. Often the sales season in the USA goes along with higher activity in the stock exchanges as corporations submit their reports on sales growth, but now it looks quite doubtful that the market will be able to preserve the pace after the rally, which has been 165 pips long and with rare retracements.
